presently there was a two-three children come a-runnin’ out o’ one o’ the other huts, an’ them an’ me stood a-lookin’ at each other.
“An’ then, all of a sudden, I give a great start, an’ catched hold, hard, o’ mother’s hand; for there, stole up so silent out o’ the trees that we hadn’t heard him come, an’ a-standin’ straight up before us, was a great tall Maori man! Mother she looked up, saw him, give one screech that you’d think they could a-heard in Town, an’ was off into that there hut of ours, an’ me with her, an’ the door shut, with both our backs against it, before you could ha’ blinked. In them days, you see, a blanket was a native’s full dress, an’ they mostly didn’t trouble to dress full, an’ that man hadn’t. . . .
“Well, but you can get used to pretty much anything, bless you! an’ specially when you must. It wasn’t very long before the Bay was home to me, an’ every day a holiday. Not that I hadn’t work to do—every one in them days had to do their bit, soon as they was born, almost; but there wasn’t any school (another thing to tease poor mother, but I know it never did me, not till I was grown up), an’ all you did was done out in the open, an’ there was the sea, an’ the Bush, an’ I’d my little mates in the other whares; an’ then, everythin’, pretty near, was contrivance—an’ young ones always like that; it’s as good as a game. We’d no oven, I remember, nor no camp-oven neither, at the start; Mother used to bake in her biggest saucepan. An’ we’d no bedsteads; father, he boarded over the floor, first thing, an’ mother used to keep it strewn deep with fresh sawdust from the pits (bright reddish-brown it was to look at, an’ as sweet! for
